A Different Kind of Grit for Women in Business Ownership

Welcome back to another episode of Bought the Biz. I am solo today as Garth is traveling. And today I wanted to talk about what I took away from the book Toxic Grit. Some of this might be a bit rambling. Garth isn't here to check me on my, my monologues, but I took a lot of really good pointers and mindsets away from this book on what ambition looks like and what it means to be a woman small business owner. So take a listen, guys, you can stick around too, but probably this one's more for the ladies.

Bought the Biz is a podcast for ETA entrepreneurs who've gone from searching for a business to actually running one. It tells the real story of what happens after the deal closes, the day-to-day operational, emotional, strategic, and leadership challenges that just don't show up in the highlight reels.

The show is story-driven and practical, sharing real experiences from operators along with clear actionable takeaways you can use in your own business today.

I'm Garth Fossano.

I'm Christi Loucks. Welcome to Bot the Biz. Hey everyone, and welcome back to Bot the Biz. It's just me today, no Garth. He is off at a conference this week, no guests, so you lucky get me with my thoughts. So today I wanted to talk about a book that I read recently, which doesn't happen very frequently these days just because of life and busyness. But, um, at the recommendation of a friend, Natalie, if you're out there, I think you listen to this podcast. Um, I recently read a book called Toxic Grit by Amanda Goetz. And if you haven't picked it up yet, uh, I really recommend it, especially if you are a woman, uh, business owner, especially if you are looking to acquire a business, if you are operating a business. Um, it provided a lot of clarity and, um, just some thought-provoking topics for me. So I wanted to share it today and kind of what my takeaways were because You know, where I am right now in life, I have a toddler, I'm pregnant, uh, 5 months pregnant. I'm operating 2 businesses, DealBuff and then Howdy Sales. And over the last, call it 6 months, you know, just saying it out loud, like I have realized I cannot do it all. Like I physically, mentally, emotionally cannot do all the things that I feel that I'm supposed to be doing. And I think for, for a long time, and even I still get glimpses of it, like, I feel that that's failure, that maybe I wasn't cut out for this role, I should go back to a 9-to-5, that, you know, I made some wrong choice along the way. But after reading this book, I realized that none of that's failure, and believing that it is is actually It's actually what happens when I think you've been sold like a version of ambition that was never designed for you or for working moms or even just female business owners and executives in the first place. So that's what I wanna talk about today. If you're a dude, you can stick around. Maybe it'll help you get insights into, you know, your partner or your coworker or whatever, but I really wanna focus today on the elements of being a woman small business owner. So that's what we're gonna talk about. Garth doesn't get a choice on this, so I've got the mic. All right, so in the book, the book is really centered around this concept of what is called toxic grit. And it's this idea that we've been taught to just do more, push harder, hold it all together. And if you're struggling, well, you just need more discipline, more systems, a better morning routine, do your cold plunge, outsource the rest of your life, whatever. And I think in the acquisition and search fund world, my sense is that this gets a bit amplified because the whole narrative is find the deal, close the deal, operate the business, grow the business. It's extremely linear. And it's very execute, execute, execute in nature. And like, okay, so here's the thing. I'm not someone who bought into the hustle culture thing and like now I'm waking up from it. That's not my story. My story is that I know how to work. In a former life, I could easily put in 60 hours a week, not think twice about it. And part of me, some days a big part of me, still wants to work that much. I love building things. I love the momentum. I love being in it. But right now, I can't. My body is literally growing a human. I have a toddler who needs me. And not to mention general household duties. I also have a husband. I have a dog. There's this constant tug of war happening inside of me where One part of my brain is saying, you should be working more. You're capable of more. You used to do so much more. And the other part is saying, girlfriend, like rest, chill. You need to be present. Like embrace this temporary season. And I think, you know, after reading this book, I am realizing that like both of those voices are right. That's what makes it so hard. And it's It's not that one voice is healthy. It's not like the other one is toxic. They're both me. I genuinely want to go harder on my businesses. And in some ways I am. And at the same time, I genuinely want to be present with my family, but I really can't fully do both right now. And that's the tension that Amanda Goetz, I hope I'm pronouncing her last name correctly, writes about, right? Where it's not about, burning out from like work you hate. It's about the guilt and the pull you feel when you deeply love multiple things and there simply aren't enough hours to like give them all what you want to give them. And I think there's another layer to this where, you know, people outside of small business ownership don't fully understand how this applies like in quote, our world. When you own the business, you are signing up to provide. Like you are taking your fate into your own hands when you decide to start a business, acquire a business, you know, whatever. There's no like salary and benefits showing up every 2 weeks regardless of how the month went. There's no one above you figuring it out. If the business doesn't work, that's, on you, your family, your employees, your customers. Like, it all sits on your shoulders. And I don't say that to belittle working a 9 to 5. I think that comes with its own pressures and trade-offs, but the weight of ownership, it's just different. I think it's personal in a way that's hard to explain until you've really felt it. Like when you're the one who signed the PG and you made the promises and you took the risk and your bank account is smaller than it was, you know, 3 months ago, the idea of just taking it easy for a while feels like very irresponsible. Even when in my case, like my body and my life in some areas are really telling me to slow down. There's this constant voice in my head that's saying like, you can't afford to because people are counting on you both immediately, my family, and then everyone else around me. So the tug of war isn't just like, do I work or do I be with my family? It's the business needs me, my family needs me. And both of those feel like life or death some days. That might be a little bit dramatic, but I think that's kind of why this season like feels very heavy. Um, And I guess even, I don't know, like on that note, if I'm being very candid, there is a very loud narrative in the acquisition ETA world about buying a business for the goal of freedom of time. I see it everywhere. You know, pitch is always about escaping the 9 to 5, being your own boss, setting your own schedule. Like working from anywhere. And I think I just, in my experience, that is not how this works, at least not in the beginning, and maybe not for a long time, years and years. When you own the business, you don't have more time. You just have like different time. And that different time comes with a million, micro decisions that you have to make, fires to put out, things that only you can handle because you're the one that has to do it. Like, you're the person, there's no one else to escalate to. So, you know, like, you can build a life with more flexibility eventually. I think that's very real. But the version where you buy a business and suddenly have all this free time, I think, is a fabrication or like an exaggeration, right? I mean, I'm running two agencies, I'm pregnant, raising a toddler, and I promise you right now, my calendar does not look like freedom. It looks like managed chaos with very little breaks in between. So if you're thinking about buying business, which again, I think you should, I'm not saying all of this to like negate that, but especially if you're a woman, just go in knowing that the freedom isn't free time. Like, the freedom is ownership. The freedom is that what you build is yours, and that's worth a lot, and you can get it to the place where you have more free time. But, you know, it's not like you just buy a business and all of a sudden you're working 5 hours a week and cash flowing and money's falling into your pockets. I don't know, I just think, like, my story— fun fact, I had my son exactly 1 year to the day after I closed on my business. So 365 days precisely. So in the span of 12 months, I went from, I just acquired a company to, now I'm responsible for this company and I have to keep this tiny human alive. And no one prepares you for that. It's really hard as an operator to a new operator to like figure out and have, you know, my, like your hands, your arms around that identity. And then all of a sudden be thrown into a completely new identity as like a brand new mom. You have to do it all on very little sleep. Like I was, I had photos of me breastfeeding and typing on my laptop at the same time. And I'm not saying that to sound tough. I'm not wearing that like a badge of honor, like, look at me, you know, girl boss, multitasking vibes. It was just reality. Like that was a normal evening. The baby needed to eat. The business needed me. I needed to get emails out. And all of those things were happening at the same time. There's like absolutely nothing glamorous about that. It's just what it looked like. Like I didn't have maternity leave. I own the business. There's no HR department. It's me. And so I, you know, like I've talked about that a little bit, but I, I just think that there are roles that we play as women specifically that make this just different and in some ways harder, uh, than our male counterparts. So I'm not knocking, I just really think that stepping into this role as a female is vastly different, and pretending it's not like doesn't help anyone, including yourself. So what I want to run through— I don't know, that was like a long preamble— but what I want to run through is, um, what I took away from this book, Toxic Grit. Again, highly recommend. Even just like do Cliff Notes, buy it, skim it, I don't care, just, you know, get the gist of it. Um, my takeaways, and I'll kind of dive a little bit more into some of the like concepts, but First of all, you don't have to operate like everyone else to be a real operator. I think I spent a lot of time looking at how other people in this ETA world were running businesses, how they were running searches, their days, and I felt like I had to match that. Some days I still feel like I kind of have to match that even from now, the CEO operator lens. But at the same time, I have Every day at 4:30, when my nanny and my toddler come back from usually the park or wherever they've been, I get a little face at my office door and guess what? I'm gonna stop whatever I'm doing and I'm gonna say hello and pick him up and have a little chit-chat with him, even if it's sometimes in the middle of a call, I still pick him up. So being an operator, like the playbook sometimes looks different when you are a mom. And I think it's really important to like embrace that. Um, you, you certainly can't be, uh, like everything all at once. And I think you have to make some really hard choices about where your energy goes. So that maybe is the second piece of it, is really guard your energy and figure out what gets the best of you, um, and just commit to that. So like right now My energy goes to my family and my business. That's it. Those are the two things that get my best, or like whatever version of my best for that day is. Um, that means my social life has taken a hit and I don't like that, but I think it's just the honest truth. Like a lot of women in this season feel that, probably feel guilty about it. Like I miss my friends. I genuinely do. Uh, it's not that I don't care about them. It's not that I never see them. I just don't see them at the same frequency. And yeah, obviously it's not that they don't matter, it's just like I literally do not have the capacity right now to be the friend I want to be and the mom I want to be and the operator I need to be. So something in there has to give, and right now it is like dinner dates and, you know, let's grab coffee and, you know, girls' nights, book clubs, like that kind of stuff. It just doesn't happen anymore. And Right now, like, it feels like a loss. It doesn't feel good, but it's the honest trade-off of this season. And I think as I was reading this book, like, I started to really understand, like, okay, just because this is my season where I can't be the friend I want to be, I have to focus on these specific roles, um, That made me feel a little bit better. Like it wasn't my full identity saying like, okay, you're a terrible friend. It's just like, no, this is where I am in this season. And that's okay. It doesn't mean I'm gonna be this way forever. Doesn't mean anything has changed about my intent, like my heart, but I just practically cannot be all of these things. So, um, I guess those were kind of my two like largest tactical, maybe not tactical, but yeah, I guess so. Like important takeaways just on a day-to-day basis is like, I can only be the operator that I can be in this moment in time with this current context. And I have to be protective of my, where I put my time and energy, just full stop. So that's my world. But if I zoom out for a second and look beyond and say like, okay, how does this matter for women in the search fund and ETA space. First and foremost, that world is still overwhelmingly male, and that's not because women aren't interested in buying businesses. I just think it's the natural way of how the model works.